This past weekend they had a charity pheasant hunt here. A friend and I participated. We both got our allotted(2) birds. Today I decided to hunt one of the planted areas to see if I could could get lucky and snag any left-overs.

I did get lucky. I did bag one pheasant. But, I did it in an unconventional way.

My dog and I had just crossed a fence. There was a tree with some brush just beyond it. My dog bee-lined into the brush. A second latter I heard a cackle and I heard a flush. The pheasant flew up into the tree. It landed on a branch about 15 feet up. He stood there right in the open. I then decided to walk towards it and shoot it when it flew. He decided to just stand on that branch. I jumped up and down, yelled at it, waived my cap, and threw assorted objects at it. That bird was not going to budge. My dog was even under him barking. After ten minutes I made up my mind.

I backed about ten or so yards away from the bird. I aimed my shotgun and blasted him out of the tree. I know this is unethical and unsporting, but this bird wasn't going to budge.

I felt kind of bad. I wanted a flying shot to give it a chance. I felt like I had no choice.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I got to go hunting with a man named Jim, who was probably in his 40's. He was one of those guys who never shot anything he couldn't eat, and never wasted a shot he could keep from.

We had been walking across a field at my grandads farm, when suddenly a quail ran down a cow path in front of us. I threw my .410 up and almost immediately, Jim pushed my barrel down, and said "Don't shoot that bird".

I thought that was kind of strange, because, that was what we were hunting. But I started running with Jim, down the trail, chasing this bird, and he stopped again. I again started to shoot, and Jim stopped me again. We chased the bird down the trail some more, and all of a sudden, it ran into 6 or 7 more birds in a bunch. I remembered what Jim had said about not shooting the bird on the ground, and did not even try to shoot. Then all at once I heard Jims 12 guage go off, and there were 5 birds, laying dead in front of us.

I guess I looked pretty suprised, and Jim turned to me and said "There ain't enough meat on one bird for all of us, so you gotta wait till they bunch up".

This happened back in the 50's when there was a lot more hunting going on for the meat rather than the sport.

I don't bird hunt and haven't for 40 years, but I guess the point to my story is, those quail sure did taste good, know matter how we got them.

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To kill something as great as a duck just to smell the gunpowder is a crime against nature. - Alan Liere
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. - George Bernard Shaw

one of my friends was pheasant hunting and it was raining and the birds wouldnt fly. His dad put one of the birds on his foot and kicked it into the air. My friend shot it at about 6 feet with a 12 gauge. He said it sort of liked popped.

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